Hugh Ritson walked rapidly through Dean's Yard in the direction of the
sanctuary. As he turned into Parliament Street the half moon rose above
the roof of Westminster Hall. But the night was still dark.
He passed through Trafalgar Square and into the Haymarket. The streets
were thronged. Crowds on crowds went languidly by. Dim ghosts of men and
women, most of them, who loitered at this hour in these streets. Old
men, with the souls long years dead within them, and the corruption
reeking up with every breath to poison every word, or lurking like
charnel lights in the eyes to blink contagion in every glance. Young
girls hopping like birds beside them, the spectres of roses in their
cheeks, but the real thorns at their hearts. There had been no way for
them but this--this and one other way: either to drift into the Thames
and be swallowed up in the waters of death, or to be carried along for a
brief minute on the froth of the waves of life.
Laughing because they might not weep; laughing because their souls were
dead; laughing in their conscious travesty of the tragedy of
pleasure--they tripped and lounged and sauntered along. And the lamps
shone round them, and above them was the glimmering moon.
As Hugh Ritson went up the steep Haymarket, his infirmity became more
marked, and he walked with a sliding gait. Seeing this, a woman who
stood there halted and limped a few paces by his side, and pretending
not to see him, shouted with a mocking laugh, "What is it--a man or a
bat?"
How the wild, mad heart of the night leaped up!
A man passed through the throng with eyes that seemed to see nothing of
its frantic frenzy and joyless joy--a stalwart man, who strode along
like a giant among midgets, his vacant eyes fixed before him, his strong
white face expressionless. Hugh Ritson saw him. They passed within two
paces, but without recognition. The one was wandering aimlessly in his
blind misery toward the Convent of St. Margaret, the other was making
for the old inn at Hendon.
* * * * *
An hour later Hugh Ritson was standing in the bar of the Hawk and Heron.
His mind was made up; his resolve was fixed; his plan was complete.
"Anybody with him?" he said to the landlady, motioning toward the
stairs.
"Not as I knows on, sir, but he do seem that restless and off his
wittals, and I don't know as I quite understands why--"
Hugh Ritson stopped her garrulous tongue. "I have found the girl. She
will come back to you to-night, Mrs. Drayton. If she brings with her the
gentleman who left these boxes in your care, take him to your son's
bedroom and tell him the person he wishes to see has arrived, and will
be with him directly."
With this he went up the stairs. Then, calling down, he added: "The
moment he is in the room come up and tell me."
A minute later he called again: "Where's the key to this door? Let me
have it."
The landlady hobbled up with the key to Drayton's bedroom; the room was
empty and the door stood open. Hugh Ritson tried the key in the lock and
saw that the wards moved freely. "That will do," he said, in a satisfied
tone.
The old woman was hobbling back. Hugh was standing in thought, with head
bent, and the nail of his forefinger on his cheek.
"By the way, Mrs. Drayton," he said, "you should get the girl to help
you a little sometimes."
"Lor's, sir, I never troubles her, being as she's like a visitor."
"Nonsense, Mrs. Drayton. She's young and hearty, and your own years are
just a little past their best, you know. How's your breathing
to-day--any easier?"
"Well, I can't say as it's a mort better, neither, thanking you the
same, sir," and a protracted fit of coughing bore timely witness to the
landlady's words.
"Ah! that's' a bad bout, my good woman."
"Well, it is, sir; and I get no sympathy, neither--leastways not from
him as a mother might look to--in a manner of speaking."
"Bethink you. Is there nothing the girl can do for you when she comes?
Nothing wanted? No errand?"
"Well, sir, taking it kindly, sir, there's them finings in the cellar
a-wants doing bad, and the boy as ought to do 'em, he's that grumpysome,
as I declare--"
"Quite right, Mrs. Drayton. Send the girl down to them the moment she
comes in, and keep her down until bed-time."
"Thank you, sir! I'm sure I takes it very kind and thoughtful of a
gentleman to say as much, and no call, neither."
The landlady shuffled down-stairs, wagging gratefully her dense old
noddle; the thoughtful gentleman left the key of Drayton's room in the
lock on the outside of the door, and ascended a ladder that went up from
the end of the passage. He knocked at a door at the top. At first there
was no answer. A dull shuffling of feet could be heard from within.
"Come, open the door," said Hugh, impatiently.
The door was opened cautiously. Drayton stood behind it. Hugh Ritson
entered. There was no light in the room; the red, smoking wick of a
tallow candle, newly extinguished, was filling the air with its stench.
"You take care of yourself," said Hugh. "Let us have a light."
Drayton went down on his knees in the dark, fumbled on the floor for a
box of lucifers, and relighted the candle. He was in his shirt-sleeves.
"Cold without your coat, eh?" said Hugh. A sneer played about his lips.
Without answering, Drayton turned to a mattress that lay in the gloom of
one corner, lifted it, took up a coat that lay under it, and put it on.
It was the ulster with the torn lapel.
Hugh Ritson followed Drayton's movements, and laughed slightly. "Men
like you are always cautious in the wrong place," he said. "Let them lay
hands on you, and they won't be long finding your--coat." The last word
had a contemptuous dig of emphasis.
"Damme if I won't burn it, for good and all," muttered Drayton. His
manner was dogged and subdued.
"No, you won't do that," said Hugh, and he eyed him largely. The garret
was empty save for the mattress and the blanket that lay on it, and two
or three plates, with the refuse of food, on the floor. It was a low
room, with a skylight in the rake of the roof, which sloped down to a
sharp angle. There was no window. The walls were half timbered, and had
once been plastered, but the laths were now bare in many places.
"Heard anything?" said Drayton, doggedly.
"Yes; I called and told the police sergeant that I thought I was on the
scent."
"What? No!"
The two men looked at each other--Drayton suspicious, Hugh Ritson with
amused contempt.
"Tell you what, you don't catch me hobnobbing with them gentry," said
Drayton, recovering his composure.
Hugh Ritson made no other answer than a faint smile. As he looked into
the face of Drayton, he was telling himself that no man had ever before
been at the top of such a situation as that of which he himself was then
the master. Here was a man who was the half-brother of Greta, and the
living image of her husband. Here was a man who, despite vague
suspicions, did not know his own identity. Here was a man over whom hung
an inevitable punishment. Hugh Ritson smiled at the daring idea he had
conceived of making this man personate himself.
"Drayton," he said, "I mean to stand your friend in this trouble."
"Tell you again, the best friend to me is the man as helps me to make my
lucky."
"You shall do it, Drayton, this very night. Listen to me. That man, my
brother, as they call him--Paul Ritson, as his name goes--is not my
father's son. He is the son of my mother by another man, and his true
name is Paul Lowther."
"I don't care what his true name is, nor his untrue, neither. It ain't
nothing to me, say I, and no more is it."
"Would it be anything to you to inherit five thousand pounds?"
"What?"
"Paul Lowther is the heir to as much. What would you say if I could put
you in Paul Lowther's place, and get you Paul Lowther's inheritance?"
"Eh? A fortune out of hand--how?"
"The way I described before."
There was a slight scraping sound, such as a rat might have made in
burrowing behind the partition.
"What's that?" said Drayton, his face whitening, and his watchful eyes
glancing toward the door. "A key in the lock?" he whispered.
"Tut! isn't your own key on the inside?" said Hugh Ritson.
Drayton hung his head in shame at his idle fears.
"I know--I haven't forgot," he muttered, covering his discomfiture.
"It's a pity to stay here and be taken, when you might as easily be
safe," said Hugh.
"So it is," Drayton mumbled.
"And go through penal servitude for life, when another man might do it
for you," added Hugh, with a ghostly smile.
"I ain't axing you to say it over. What's that?" Drayton cowered down.
The bankrupt garret had dropped a cake of its rotten plaster. Hugh
Ritson moved not a muscle; only the sidelong glance told of his contempt
for the hulking creature's cowardice.
"The lawyer who has charge of this legacy is my friend and comrade," he
said, after a moment's silence. "We should have no difficulty in that
quarter. My mother is--Well, she's gone. There would be no one left to
question you. If you were only half shrewd the path would be clear."
"What about her?"
"Greta? She would be your wife."
"My wife?"
"In name. You would go back, as I told you, and say: 'I, whom you have
known as Paul Ritson, am really Paul Lowther, and therefore the
half-brother of the woman with whom I went through the ceremony of
marriage. This fact I learned immediately on reaching London. I bring
the lady back as I found her, and shall ask that the marriage--which is
no marriage--be annulled. I deliver up to the rightful heir, Hugh
Ritson, the estates of Allan Ritson, and make claim to the legacy left
me by my father, Robert Lowther.' This is what you have to say and do,
and every one will praise you for an honest and upright man."
"Very conscientious, no doubt; but what about him?"
"He will then be Paul Drayton, and a felon."
Drayton chuckled. "And what about her?"
"If he is in safe keeping, she will count for nothing."
"So I'm to be Paul Lowther."
"You are to pretend to be Paul Lowther."
"I told you afore, as it won't go into my nob, and no more it will,"
said Drayton, scratching his head.
"You shall have time to learn your lesson; you shall have it pat," said
Hugh Ritson. "Meantime--"
At that instant Drayton's eyes were riveted on the skylight with an
affrighted stare.
"Look yonder!" he whispered.
"What?"
"The face on the roof!"
Hugh Ritson plucked up the candle and thrust it over his head and
against the glass. "What face?" he said, contemptuously.
Again Drayton's head fell in shame at his abject fear.
There was a shuffling footstep on the ladder outside. Drayton held his
head aside, and listened. "The old woman," he mumbled. "What now?
Supper, I suppose."